[Publib] RE: Military recruiters & libraries

[Sheila Brown Evans, Director]

I thought this article might be of interest to the list, since part of our 
previous conversation touched on the question of whether or not military 
service can be termed "educational" -- at least for the purpose of 
classifying military recruitment literature in terms of library policies on 
the display of pamphlets & posters.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49221


Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Army to offer college credits for training
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, October 3, 2007


ARLINGTON, Va. - An Army program set for next year will allow soldiers to 
use their military experience to earn professional credit from colleges and 
technical institutes, according to Lt. Gen. Ben Freakley, commander of the 
U.S. Army Accessions Command.
Under the program, "every soldier who comes in [to the Army] will be 
afforded the opportunity to pursue either a technical certification - say, a 
welder - or a college degree," Freakley told defense reporters in Washington 
on Tuesday.
"The idea would be, by the time you're a staff sergeant, somewhere between 
six and 10 years in the Army, you're going to have your associate's degree," 
Freakley said.
"And by the time you get ready to retire, as a master sergeant or sergeant 
major, you'll have your bachelor's degree, so you'll be ready to re-enter 
the work force with the discipline, with the Army values, with the 
leadership training you got in the Army - plus a degree."
The program, dubbed "The College of the American Soldier," will be 
administered through the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort 
Monroe, Va., Freakley said.
The Army is now "working with colleges to get our training programs 
certified," and the program will "probably start about February 2008," 
Freakley said.
The way the program would work, Freakley said, is for colleges to grant 
soldiers semester credit hours toward a degree for certain levels of regular 
Army training.
For example, he said, soldiers going through basic training would get 17 
hours of college credit, given "for the leadership, for the first aid, for 
other things they're learning in basic training," he said.
At the Sergeants Major Academy, meanwhile, soldiers could get up to 45 hours 
of college credit, because "they have to write, they have to do literature 
work, they have to do public speaking, they have to do leadership," Freakley 
said.
The number of semester hours it takes to earn a degree at accredited 
universities and colleges varies by the degree earned. The typical minimum 
number of hours required for a bachelor of arts degree is 120.

© 2007 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.



Sheila Brown Evans, Director
Hoke County Public Library
334 N. Main Street
Raeford NC  28376
910-875-2502
sheila.b.evans at ncmail.net